I love the videos that Aurasma posts on YouTube, highlighting its very cool app that adds augmented reality (AR) to physical objects like paper, posters, etc. In this video, we see a demonstration of the AR-enhanced Philadelphia Inquirer. By pointing an iPad or iPhone at the newspaper, the app adds multimedia components to the physical paper - such as showing a video instead of a flat photo, or playing a movie trailer on an ad.

While this is an interesting concept, the whole part seems to be redundant. If a person already owns an iPad or an iPhone, there's a browser on their device that can point to the newspaper's website. There's probably a mobile app that could be developed for the phone and tablet that produces the same thing. Adding this interactivity to a physical newspaper by requiring a device that can also access the same content online seems to be just a cute parlor trick.

The Aurasma technology is more interesting for things beyond newspapers - it's for things like movie posters, or museum attractions, things that don't necessarily have an immediate online presence, but can enhance an experience for someone in that specific location.